Folding chairs have been known for many years, if not centuries. The distinguishing feature is that the chair can be manipulated between a folded disposition in which the back is pivoted to approximate the seat, and an open disposition in which the back is disposed more or less perpendicular to the seat.
Many different types of folding chairs are known, including rocking chairs. U.S. Pat. No. 4,807,926 to Brunn (February 1989), for example, depicts a folding rocking chair in which the back legs are pivoted against the rockers, and the front legs slide along the rockers towards the back leg/rocker pivots to approximate the seat and legs to the rockers. The folding rockers of U.S. Pat. No. 5,702,152 (December 1997) and Des 380633 (July 1997), both to Shaw, provide legs that are releasably engaged with the respective rockers, and that mate with channels to provide a sliding relationship among the legs. U.S. Pat. No. 3,114,572 to Hopkins (December 1963) depicts a folding rocking chair in which the back legs are fixed in position with respect to the rockers, and front legs that are pivotally disposed with respect to the rockers.
More recently collapsible chairs have gained widespread attention. Collapsible chairs are different from folding chairs in that the legs can be manipulated to approximate each other in close parallel or substantially parallel relationship. The back may optionally fold against the seat, but such motion is not necessarily included in collapsible chairs. U.S. Pat. No. 3,124,387 to Maclaren (March 1964) depicts an early collapsible chair in which the seat and back are formed from a continuous piece of fabric. These are so-called sling type chairs. There have been many other designs over the years, including hinged lawn chairs such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,650 to Berman et al. (December 1987), and U.S. Pat. No. 5,058,950 to Mann (October 1991).
Approximating the legs, seat frame, and back is a relatively complicated business, primarily because in the open disposition, the seat must be more or less perpendicular to both the legs and the back. Rocking chairs add rockers as yet additional perpendicular elements, which increase the complexity still further. This may be why rocking chairs are widely known to fold, but only rarely known to be collapsible. One reference that does describe a collapsible rocking chair is U.S. Pat. No. 4,685,725 to Helfrich (August 1987). Helfrich collapses his rocking chair by pivoting the rockers B, B′ against all four legs of the chair, (see specification at col. 10, lines 55–60, and FIGS. 16, 50, 51). Unfortunately, that solution yields a very bulky product because much of the length of the rockers necessarily extends out beyond the legs in the collapsed disposition.
Thus, there is a continuing need to provide novel methods and apparatus for collapsible rocking chairs.